The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 2, 1927, Page 8

Looking Forward — »y Tmurser Lewis SCIENCE! What a word to conjure with. It has come to have a sort of hallowed meaning like HOLY GHOST of old. What SCIENCE has done, will do, can do and may do is being awefully con- jectured about in much the same way as the won- der workings of HIM were piously broadcast in the age of needle-dancing angels. The gamut of miraculous power with which this ’ shibboleth is clothed runs from the complete out of the race to a mechanized paradise ilions of synthetic super-humans. It extends from the gushing imagination of H. G. Wells to the dark forebodings of a genuine thinker like Bertrand Russell. In between, you find thousands of Sunday supplement blurbers, “scientific” maga- zine hacks and news-gap stoppers hailing the day when you can fly to work in an air. lizzy and carry your lunch in a capsule. But what they all forget because they don’t know any better or choose to forget because they do know better is that science has not yet become divorced from society.’ Their efforts to make their haloed men of science into cloistered wizards work- ing miracles with test-tubes, radio-activity and duectless glands quite uninfluenced by social con- ditions and historical processes harks back to the day of the ALMIGHTY who was likewise much too important to be touched by such inconsequential things. But this making a religion of science may not be as silly as it sounds. Mightn’t there be a sort of purpose behind it? The old time religion is going to the bow-wows. The immaculate concep- tion is, as it were, falling before contraception; transubstantiation doesn’t sit well on a stomach fed with calories and vitamines; nor can. the voice of the lord hope to compete with the loud-speaker, The saw-dust trail gag is so much on the wane that a new kind of narcotic is plainly needed— and being supplied. The Jesus shouters can no longer deliver the goods with the old pie-in-the-sky stuff. The slaves won’t swallow it in large enough doses to make them forget or not to see that their condition of wages servitude is a far more pressing problem than the hereafter. Operative 1875 in the nut and bolt turning division of Fordson plant, Detroit, Michigan, ain’t the man his dad used to be. He was far more absorbed in Lindbergh’s hop than his grandfather ever was in the coming of the lord. So they rearrange the sky for him and serve up a different kind of pie. He is made to see, in- stead of angels, white ttiniced, sharp-beaked, big- domed SCIENTISTS working out his salvation in laboratories. “It won’t be long now!” they whis- per. “The time is coming,” “Have faith.” Then they paint the picture. Methuseleh will be a kid along side of you when you’ve only had your second pair of glands—you’ll side-slip onto the factory landing field in your new helicopter, be whirled to your station on a speed conveyor, tend to your buttons and switches to get the plant going and glide home to your dinner of concentrated cubes consumed while you are watch- ing what’s happening, if you like, in Timbuctoo or Albany. In the meantime, you are, of course, turning nuts and bolts for Mr. Ford, who is now starting his second billion. In the other direction there are some otherwise level-headed thinkers of great cerebral repute like Prof. Haldane, who have already begun bleating about SCIENCE getting so far ahead of mere man that humanity is certain to commit hari-kari. with the tremendous power that will be at its disposal. This is simply the reverse of the medal which on the other sjde shows a heavenly picture of radio- activized sweetness and monkey-glandular light. And rests on the same misconception of what real science is all about. For all the tremendous advances in knowledge and scientific achievement showing on the credit side of the ledger in the last half century, wage slaves still lurch to the job on traction magnates’ run down, nickel-snatching flat-wheelers; you still go hungry if you can’t get a boss to do you the favor of letting him exploit you; when you go to war, you get murdered much more cunningly and in far greater numbers, but you still get mur- dered; your exploiters are able to enjoy their profits in a much more intensive and pleasurable way than they used to but they are still parasites; innovation follows innovation, discovery becomes commonplace but there is still as little anxiety to discover a way to eliminate the profit system as there ever was— in a word, the class-war is still on. So that if a worker can withstand the barrage of dream inspiring, wonder-science sermonizing long enough to take a quick look about him he will discover that he is still very much of a wage slave and that science, like everything else, is the prop- erty of the capitalists. The URGE hehind this feverish scramble of invention and discovery is primarily PROFIT. Some of the most remarkable scientific achievements, in themselves, of course, all to the good, have been made in the laboratories of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. and Westinghouse. The radio has already become a mint-like monopoly for a comparatively few profit- rakers. Television awaits the same fate. The de- velopment of aviation means the development of a new source of income. Scientists are by no means gods or demi-gods They are part of the system. No fear of them getting too far ahead. They will be held in check if they show a disposition to get too cantankerous. Their genius will continue to be diverted into chan- nels that will show new ways of making profits or create new machines for the subjection of revo- lutionary Chinese, Indians and WORKERS. What solid scientifie progress is being made under capitalism will not be lost to the world. Its accumulation of mechanical and chemical creations will be a much deserved bequest to an order in which science will not be hamstrung by social divi- sion and private gain. Let the scientific revivalists do their Billy Sunday act—and let the wage slaves remember that the class war has still to be fought out and won, The Night I have heard of so many who can shut out the cadence of trains and all the night’s noises, and of so many others who are content to cloister themselves in a small room, unaffected by anything at all; who can sit alone, altogether alone, most of the time, even when a June night experiences the singular beauty of emerging from its virginity. I I cannot understand how any man or woman can be always alone. Ur That one must be sterile, unimaginative, cannot have been an adolescent, nor passed adolescence. IV To sit alone tonight, to walk the streets as I have done this last hour, to be completely alone, —dear comrade—but it hurts—so much—so much— dear comrade—but it hurts. Vv Bs You don’t know, my dear, (I wish you could!) how it is to come to a city and move into a room, and then move out of that, after a few months, into another exactly as monotonous, cold—yes, and bare. VI T hate small rooms where one is quite strange, where you cannot come in and talk to me. VII When leaves sweep the air then, in a rush, an electric light is superfluous. . . . Turn off the light... . See?—I don’t complain now. Iam a social creature and dislike solitude. VIII Thave heard of so many who can shut out the brushing of trees and all the night’s noises. IX But I can’t. These things should not be shut out and I must not be altogether deserted. D:¢ For the night is very sweet; but is also very painful without you. —OSCAR RYAN. 4